Page 3 of Crosswind

Tomas looks at me with the expression he has used for sixteen years. "You reorganised my bookshelf because it was bothering you. It wasn't your apartment."

"Your system was illogical."

"My point stands." He sets the cup down. "So you're waiting. Every day. Going to the gym together, having dinner, sitting on the sofa — and just — waiting."

"Yes."

He looks at me for a long moment. "Is it hard?"

I look at the wall beside the window. This is the question I have not asked myself in those words. It turns out the answer is immediate.

"Yes," I say.

Tomas is quiet. He doesn't make anything of it. "When does he get back?"

"Friday."

He picks up his coffee. The smile is small. Warm. "Good luck Friday."

"I don't need luck," I say.

"No," he agrees. "But I think Patrick might."

The following evening — Thursday, Singapore time, which means he is in the hotel and cannot sleep, which is a pattern I have learned — my phone lights up.

I miss you like crazy. Can I stay over Friday? Don't want to go home.

I read this three times.

Patrick Sutton, who has apparently decided that four days is long enough to abandon all pretence, has just told me exactly what he means. Directly. Without qualifications. I am not entirely sure what to do with this except sit very still at my kitchen table and look at the canal.

I type back: I miss you too. Come straight here.

Eleven seconds. Then: Already planning on it.

I put the phone down. I look at the canal.

I am not entirely confident I could lie beside him in the early morning and do nothing about it.

I am, I realise, no longer sure I want to.

On Friday, he comes through the door at half past seven and drops his bag in the hallway and doesn't say anything, just finds me in the kitchen and puts his arms around me from behind and holds on. His face goes into my neck. He is still in his jacket. The lamb is on the stove.

I put down the spoon. I put my hands over his.

We stay like that for a moment. The city outside, the canal, the lamp on in the sitting room. Him warm and solid against my back after four days of his jacket on the coat hook and his mug on the shelf and his absence everywhere his presence usually is.

"Hi," he says. Into my neck.

"Hi," I say.

He turns me around. Kisses me… properly, without preamble, both hands on my face, and I let him and kiss him back and think, not for the first time, that I have significantly underestimated how much I missed him.

We eat dinner eventually. The lamb is good. He says so three times, which is two more than necessary and exactly right. Afterwards we move to the sofa and he pulls me into him — not beside him, into him, his arm around my shoulders and his chin finding the top of my head, and this is new. This is four days away and I miss you like crazy and come straight here and something that has shifted between Tuesday morning and now, some degree of openness that neither of us is pretending isn't there.

I don't get my book out.

We sit like that for a long time. His hand moves slowly up and down my arm. At some point he turns his face into my hair and stays there. I feel him exhale.